Remembering LBJ

There were times back 1960's when things happened that could only have happen then. Like the Yippies ran a pig for president, 200,000 people gathered on the Sheep Meadow in Central Park for a Love-In and Dr. Spock got arrested in front of the Pentagon. People truly believed. Part of every American student's required education became taking over one or more campus buildings and issueing non-negociable demands. Woodstock happened and Flower Power bloomed  So did the Democratic Convention in Chicago, where I was tear gassed in the streets along with lots of media people because Mayor Daley didn't want the rest of the world to see what was going on. Later I found out the photographer I shared a hotel room with in Chicago that week was an FBI agent. At least 3 people who you might glimpse in the following video were government agents of one sort or another. One was an undercover New York City Police officer. He went on to become Chief of Police in some backwater town. And you thought the current crop of  hi-tech evesdroping  was something new!

Anyway, even with Big Brother watching – and occasionally participating - political protest also came of age in that fine decade and fun stuff could happen any time and any place. And for any cause. Like the day Abby Hoffman and a few friends brought trading on the NY Stock Exchange to a complete stop by tossing a hand full of one dollar bills on to the floor from the visitors gallery.  Then they watched all the traders forgetting about trading and scrambling for the bills. Or when waiters – who turned out to not really be waiters - dropped pig's heads in front of politicians at black tie dinners and squirted Con-Ed exec's with soot as they left their Executive Offices. One lone protester was famous for showing up in odd places and throwing cream pies in the faces of politicians. A bunch of gay guys refused to get out of a little bar on Christopher Street  called the Stonewall when the police raided it. 

One candidate for President – on the Love Party -campaigned naked claiming he had nothing to hide. Lots of other people got naked in public for less serious reasons. We had fun. We threw great parties. Women had The Pill. The Yippie pig got arrested so they bought another one.  

And while all this was going on, in that Great American Tradition of learning world geography by going to new places and killing the people we find there, lots of guys were learning about a place called Viet Nam for the first time. And Lyndon Johnson was the Bastard -In-Chief with the blood of a few million South East Asians on his hands. 

Got that all?

OK, so that was the setting that afternoon, August 27, 1967,  when a small group gathered in front of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. It was President Lyndon Johnson's birthday. They didn't really like him. Nobody liked him. They did not really want to wish him a happy birthday either. As an important part of the planned celebration they had chipped in to buy a genuine Stetson hat;  the clerk at the Stetson Hat Shop suggested the LBJ Model. Really. The moment arrived. So did I and a few reporters.

For years, my friend Arthur told me that at that event he had handed me his 8 mm movie camera and that I had shot some film. I have no memory of that. None at all.  A few weeks ago - and 48 years later  -  Arthur sent me a copy of that film. That is when I saw it for the first time. It is a terrible piece of film making.  And I still do not remember shooting it and looking it over 50 years later, I can see that many of my still photos were shot while the film was being shot, so I could not have shot most of it.  Mabe a bit.  

OK, now, with the back story down, go watch it. Share it with your friends.

Abi Gazunt!